U(np)acking “Patsy” reference

[Raphael Saltwood]

Imho, and in brief, confronted with the event, BD seeks and finds salvation/explanation/explication in music. Works for him, he’s a musician...but even for music consumers this route has some appeal, doesn’t have too many 90 degree turns, doesn’t pass the Texas School Book Depository. Probably safe even with the top down,  most of the time.

“Just a patsy” - if I ever get shot in a garage, I hope I have the presence of mind to come up with anything half so good.

But this double entendres right into the theme: moved by the statement, internalizes it, works out a “rue with a difference” - rather than being a patsy in the Oswald sense, Mr Dylan tried on the phrase but anchors it to the country singer Patsy Cline - whose biopic has often been on heavy rotation in the Botany household and whose life was quite moving and not quite inspirational...

 Dylan’s trajectory at the time of his motorcycle accident, eg, may have struck him as not dissimilar to hers in some respects (the movie version of the plane crash that took her life was quite gripping, every time)

He places himself amongst the singers, quite rightly, with this phrase...and works a very generous panoply of songs and singers into the rest of the song.

I’ve had my gripes with Mr Dylan ever since I heard of him: always thought he should’ve stayed with that one lady friend who shared the album cover with him, and been nicer to Joan Baez, he was rude to fans in front of an interviewer in 1966 for a rotogravure article I read as a kid, Hurricane Carter seems a dubious cause for him to celebrate, when I was a smoker I was miffed that he gave it up, I’ve read that at his shows he doesn’t like people to look him in the eyes, in Chronicles he mentions that he found a real resonance with the thoughts of Barry Goldwater, he was kind of mean to Donovan that one time, we had to stand in the line in the snow for tickets in 1974, usw. (Actually that last one was fun)

But I had a dream one time in which I met him, and told him, “I’ve been a fan of yours for years,” and I guess that’s pretty true. Nobody’s perfect, but he writes and sings quite movingly.

Anyway, I think the Patsy reference was ok, within what I take to be the purport of the song.
Ymmv, of course. (-:




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